Lot 51

Seago, Edward 1910-1974 British AR, Norfolk Landscape

Description:

Seago, Edward 1910-1974 British AR, Norfolk Landscape. 9 x 10.25 ins. (23 x 26 cms.), Oil on Board, Signed and Dated 1928. This is a very rare early picture by Seago with excellent provenance. Seago was a patient of Dr. W.W.Thomson, who was working at the time in a practice near Norwich, Thomson, uncle Willy to the vendor, was an interesting man himself. He was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, of Scottish heritage and was educated in Scotland gaining a medical degree at the university of Edinburgh. He practiced as a doctor in Trinidad for a while but came back to the UK in time to be called up to the army as a member of the medical corps in World War I, where he served mainly in the Balkans with the rank of captain. After the war he was a general practitioner in the Norwich area. It was here that he treated the Young Edward Seago, who was already suffering from the heart problems that were to plague him for the rest of his life. As a token of gratitude Seago presented the small oil on board landscape to him. The vendor writes, "I visited great uncle Willy, my maternal grandfather's brother, in Norbury on a regular basis as a child in the 1960s and remember the little painting hanging on the wall in pride of place. My father, a keen amateur art historian, suggested to him that he should inscribe the back of the picture alluding to its history. He did so in 1968, but appears to have got his dates slightly wrong, as Seago had reached the age of 18 rather than 16 by 1928. In line with his wishes, my father inherited the picture. After my father's death, the picture came to me." As a matter of interest, uncle Willy died just short of his hundredth birthday. The two extra photographs feature Uncle Willy as a boy in Trinidad and Uncle Willy as Captain Doctor in the World War